Today's communication networks are becoming more and more inefficient. One reason for this growing inefficiency is that networks are designed to carry large data packets, despite a very large share of the network traffic comprising small data packets. As used herein, a large data packet is a data packet that has a size equal to or greater than approximately 1500 bytes. As used herein, a small data packet is a data packet that has a size less than approximately 1500 bytes. For example, a small data packet has a size of 100 bytes. Numerous measurements and statistics from wireless and wired networks indicate that a big share of all data packets flowing through today's communication networks are small data packets. Data packets sized up to 100 bytes represent around 20% of total amount of data packets on networks; however, they transfer only 2-5% of the total data volume on networks.
Today's communication networks are optimized to carry large data packets (e.g., 1500 byte data packets) or aggregates of large data packets (e.g., 8×1500 byte data packets). However, since a lot of the data volume flowing through communication networks today comprise small data packets, which have a large overhead (e.g., preamble sequences, frame headers, acknowledge packets, etc., which consume bandwidth unnecessarily), communication networks are inefficient. There is a need to address these inefficiencies associated with communication networks.